Well, yeah...free passes were made available this mornin' for a screenin' early tonight, so I went, instead of goin' through with my original plan to see Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocal this afternoon.

I wish I had gone to MIGP instead.

The movie was so dull...there were a few good bits to it, but between those good parts was a whole lot of nothin' of interest.

Ah, well, at least it was free. And I don't have to worry about goin' to see it when it opens in March.

Next movie to see will be The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with a buddy of mine this Sunday. And next week's free screenin' will be Safe House instead of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. Much rather watch a Denzel movie over a Rock movie any day...

30. That One Night: (✩✩✩½) - Internet - A guy gets dumped by his girlfriend and subsequently gets drugged and taken out on the town by his buddies. The girl, on the other hand, is taken out by her friends in an attempt to help her move on. This movie is a low-budget Canadian comedy that lacks the gloss of a major Hollywood production, but it still looks good, has a wee bit of raunch, and is generally fun to watch as talk of sex and relationships among late 20-somethings take place. I checked it out mainly to see Amanda Crew. You can watch the movie online in four parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4.

31. Sex Drive: (✩✩½) - DVD - I put this one on my ziplist after Katrina Bowden's babe thread, but got disc 1 which featured the theatrical version. I wanted the longer unrated version which, so I didn't watch it and ordered disc 2. Basically, the movie is about a guy in high school who sets off on a 9-hour drive in his brother Rex's prized muscle car so he can hook up with this hot girl he met online. Along for the ride are his two friends, Lance and Felicia. Rex, who's not too happy about his car being stollen, is played by James Marsden, who's pretty crude and over-the-top hilarious. Felicia is played by Amanda Crew (making this an Amanda Crew double bill), and Seth Green plays an amish guy they run into along the way. The movie is raunchy and reminds me of those sex comedies from the late 90s, but I've seen better. One thing the longer unrated version promised was More Tits & Gratuitous Nudity™ and they delivered, but what they did was have a fully nude digitally inserted model walk in and out of shots at random. And that's not all. There's also More Cock™. That's not what makes it longer though. Outtakes, complete with laughing and a visible camera crew, are spliced into the movie, making things a bit awkward. The director warned us that we should watch the theatrical version first, and after seeing the longer version, I figured that maybe it would have been better. I don't like watching most movies more than once anyway, so I don't regret my decision to stick with the unrated cut. More Tits & Gratuitous Nudity™ was a priority, afterall.

32. Chronicle: (✩✩✩½) - Theatre - This movie is about three high school guys who gain powers of telekinesis after coming into contact with a crystaline structure they found underground. Most of the film is told through camcorder footage, Cloverfield-style. It's an enjoyable movie, and watching the guys use their growing powers is interesting and fun. The issue of power being misused does come into play but it's balanced out with power not being misused, and I liked that. Amanda Crew isn't in this one, but that's OK.

Courtesy of Netflix streaming, War Zone. We are instructed that the auteur theory is dead, but per the usual practice we will only speak of length of the director, one Tim Roth, with only a sentence about any others.

The blurb and categorization led me to believe this was a thriller about a teen finding his sister and father had a sinister pact aimed against his pregnant mother. The mother's water breaks very soon, and, after a car crash caused by the distraction of the brother and sister standing up in the back seat, torsos and heads through the sunroof, wildly waving their arms, gives birth. In other words, the blurb is misleading about the movie.

Tim Roth screwed the sound royally, much of the dialogue being inaudible and/or garbled by background noise (as well as natural English accents being hard for US ears.) This is especially true of the father's many business calls. I suspect Mr. Roth deemed the question of what kind of business the father did was irrelevant to the story.

The father is played by Ray Winstone, the mother by Tilda Swinton. Ms Swinton bravely displays her large breasts and postnatal belly. The daughter gets to display her breasts and pubis, repeatedly. We get a short display of Mr. Winstone's genitals. The brother of course is deeply attached to his boxer shorts and does not share the rest of the family's casual attitude to nudity en famille. I suppose this is supposed to be significant for his character, whose virginity seems to be a source of distress for his sister, who even tries to set him up with her girlfriend. Her breasts we also get to see, of course. Naturally, the sister is overworked what with a girlfriend, a boyfriend and dear old Dad and spends the overwhelming majority of the movie weeping or red-eyed.

One has to dwell on the nudity because otherwise there is very little else to see. There's lots of rain. The light is washed out. Indeed, the lighting is so poor, at all times and in all places, that one cannot be certain the spots on the brother's face really are acne. This is actually important, because not only does he have a man's full growth, which can happen early of course. But otherwise, the actor playing the baby brother (called such in the film!) could be doing post-graduate work in film studies.

Roth leaves most family connections out of the film Tilda Swinton has very little to do other than put on breast cream and gaze adoringly at her baby. There isn't even any comment on the car accident that could have killed them all! Roth leaves the camera static much of the time. He rarely cuts from one shot to another to give us a clue as to the character's emotional reaction. When there is an extended closeup, for instance, there is rarely any shift from the actor in the frame to see the other actor's reaction. There is a larger number of full body and mid body shots than is usual. Settings are rarely revealed, interestingly. There is a beach and there is a seaside cliff, complete with abandoned pillbox fortification and there is some sort of moor and some sort of bar and some sort of hospital but no one could possibly figure out how these things are related to each other.

Strikingly, when the brother throws away his video camera he just used to film his father performing anal sex, Roth refuses to pull back the camera enough to see clearly that the boy has thrown his camera off the cliff. This act is in fact the only clue I had that he was at the cliff's edge!

If the brother's age is only crudely suggested, the sister's is completely indeterminate. She drinks, she has a girlfriend she can ask to screw her brother (although for some reason she changes her mind,) she spends the night on the beach with her boyfriend in defiance of curfew. Why she's still under her father's thumb is completely mysterious. This appears to be the "point" Roth is making, or at least, thinks he's making, that human motivations are completely mysterious. This is an extreme thesis, supported largely by movies like this that withhold information about the characters.

What the movie's story says is that casual nudity in the home leads to incest and that only a virgin can sit in judgment and redeem the soiled victims of incest by sacrificial blood. This sound grotesque when spelled out but it is the only thing that is actually on screen for us. I'm afraid I think Tim Roth was really more enthralled with the extensive female nudity and the hints of brother/sister incest than any serious subject.

The movie was based on a novel by Alexander Stuart as I remember and may actually have been about how a father could establish a mysterious ascendancy over a daughter. Or it may has just been lurid hokum. Can't tell from this flick, primarily created by Tim Roth.

I finally got around to seeing this film. This movie would've been a solid A/A- if it only it had NOT had Kick Ass. Dave/Kick Ass actually brought the movies pace and development down every time he was on screen. The only scenes with him that were worth having were his moments with burgeoning love Katie. A movie that just had Big Daddy and Hit Girl would've been solid. Nic Cage owned in his role and only gets me pumped to see Ghost Rider 2 next weekend. Chloe as Hit Girl and Big Daddy's daughter fulfilled all the "comic booky" needs of a "real person" becoming a hero.
I'd frankly love a sequel that also dealt with the "cheat death" cliche and brought Big Daddy back. Afterall, perhaps he realizes what his friend and former partner said is true, "This isn't the life for her". So, he's alive but allows her to live with him.Kick Ass 2: Now with less Kick, More Hit - that's the movie we should get if a sequel actually ever happens.

Oh, and as a side I liked that it had Clark Duke in it from one of my favorite comedies of the past decade, Sex Drive. I see Richard just saw it. Frankly I like the movie so much I find the mindless extra nudity distracting from the story. While the models are mind numbingly hot the random placed tits, and yes cock, just kill the flow of the movie for me.

It's a classic. It's been a long time since seen this film. Probably 20 years, but it was on TV, so I decided to watch it. Very entertaining, when after such a long time still the words to most of the songs.

6. True Grit (2010) - 4/5

It would rank somewhere in the middle amongst Coen brothers movies, but still enjoyable. Hailee Steinfeld was amazing, it will be interesting to see what roles she gets in the future.

I was very surprised about this movie. The Trailer was very very misleading, because it kind of made this movie look like a comedy. Well, it was anything but a comedy, as it was one of the more depressing movies I've seen in a while. However, I still did enjoy it, as it did explore the concepts of loss and being a single father trying to get through that loss while raising two daughters (Who were foul-mouthed by the way). I like anything Clooney does, and he was very good here, but I wonder if the Academy nominated him just because he's George Clooney. I didn't find anything oscar worthy in this film and think now that The Artist is going to clean up Director, Actor, and Picture. It was a good film, but a very depressing film.

Inspired by watching Blood Simple, I decided to rewatch some of the older Coen Brothers movies that I haven't watched in a few years. This is one of the Coen Brothers' cult films (perhaps the cult film), and it's very rare to see an article on Jeff Bridges that doesn't mention The Dude in some way. This is probably the purest distillation of the Coens' absurdist humour ever produced, and it's very funny much of the time, though on second viewing I found much the same as I had the first time, that I don't rate it as highly as many do. It's more than a little self-satifisfied, and some of the schticks get wearying.

A buddy of mine came out this afternoon & we watched the American remake of TGwtDT. He liked it, I thought it was pretty good, too. I liked it more than the Swedish original, just 'cause it was in english...and its nice to see Daniel Craig play an ordinary guy every now & then.

After my buddy left, I followed TGwtDT up with The Artist, just 'cause it was the next thing playin'. Better than I thought it would be, that's for sure. John Goodman is always cool, and I liked that the aspect ratio was more in time with a fullscreen viewin', as older movies tend to be, and it made sense, since this is a tribute to the silent film era.

My third, and last, free movie of the day will be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which starts in about an hour.

Drive: I enjoyed this slick combination of art house and genre fare even more the second time around. Refn is a director to watch. Ryan Gosling is similarly talented. I'm shocked he hasn't become a bankable star yet. Albert Brooks delivers one of his best performances in years, and it's a shame he wasn't even nominated for an Oscar. Too violent for the Academy, I suppose.

Crazy Stupid Love: What do you know, two Gosling films from 2011 in a row. I liked this one even more the second time around, too. Previously I was critical of the initial meeting of Gosling and Carrel, but I didn't have that reaction this time. It's a shame there are so many mediocre romantic comedies produced each year, and not more films like this one. When Carrel attempts to win back his wife in their back yard (and, in any other romantic comedy, he would), it's aboslutely side-splitting.

Theatres: 7Home Video: 12 +2
Computer: 1

I went to a preview screening of Act of Valor last week, but have been asked to hold any comments until the 24th. I'll be eviscerating the movie then, along with, I suspect, the majority of critics.

After seeing their new film last month, I had to watch the first two cinema outings of the Muppets (which I hadn't seen until now). Both are very good and very funny films, although I like the "Muppet Caper" better. I felt it worked better as a film, whereas the first was more like a series of episodes (mostly due to it being a road film).

He was on the verge of that in 2004, but then he retreated into the indie fringe until this year; it earned him major acclaim as an actor, though, and an Oscar nomination. Now he's back doing studio films in addition to indie stuff.

It's a shame there are so many mediocre romantic comedies produced each year, and not more films like this one.

Click to expand...

The co-directors of that previously did I Love You Phillip Morris (and wrote Bad Santa some years earlier), which I also really liked. I like what they bring to their movies, and they stand out in a genre that hasn't been reliably producing strong entries in about 20 years.

33. Couples Retreat: (✩✩✩) - DVD - One couple plans a trip to a couple's retreat in the South Pacific to see if their marriage is worth saving. They bring along their friends, consisting of three other couples, as part of a package deal, and all of them learn something about themselves. Fun movie with a great cast consisting of Vince Vaughn, Kriten Bell, Malin Akerman and Jason Bateman.

34. RV: (✩✩✩) - TV - Robin Williams cancels a family trip to Hawaii in order to go on a business trip disguised as an RV trip to Colorado. Hilarity and hijinx ensue.

35. Chaos Theory: (✩✩✩✩) - TV - Ryan Reynolds plays a married man who's life starts falling apart after being late for the ferry kicks off a series of events. It's a good dramatic piece with a rather nice ending.

36. Black Swan: (✩✩✩✩✩) - DVD - An aspiring ballet dancer loses her grip on reality when she becomes obsessed with the role of a lifetime. This is the first movie this year that I've given five stars to. It's a wonderful story about perfectionism and how one can get in their own way. Natalie Portman gave a real tour-de-force in this one. It's my favorite movie of hers since 1994's Leon. She was perfect. I was so jazzed I stood up when it ended. When the movie came out, a lot of people were talking about the lesbian scene between her and Kunis, but my favorite scene was when Natalie's character started to pleasure herself in bed. I was expecting the usual close-up of sighs and faces, but she took it further and really put her whole body into it. One of the hotest scenes ever.

The Omega Man: Quite possibly a worse movie than I Am Legend. The more recent adaptation was a third-act disaster, but this film is just silly through and through. Honestly, I was taken aback by how bad it often was, considering many of the reviews I've read. Of particular amusement is Heston's driving in the film. It's hilariously bad -- he continuously gets into car accidents for absolutely no reason (at times, not even the plot demands him to crash a vehicle; he just does it anyway). Also, the motorcycle stunt double for Heston is the worst stunt double I've seen this side of the original Star Trek. Different body type, different hair style, different hair color -- and well lit so it's all quite apparent. And don't get me started on the forced romance, which happens because...well, that's the sort of thing that happens in the movies, I guess. Heston and Cash have zero chemistry with one another, and their characters have no reason for the devotion they show towards one another.

The Adjustment Bureau: An excellent sf movie that's a bit undone in the final minutes by a clumsy, easy ending. Still, I rather enjoyed it up to that point, and Damon and Blunt had excellent chemistry together.

A space pilot (I guess he's an alien, but for all intents and purposes he acts like a human) crash lands in Norways during the time of Vikings. There was also an alien monster on the ship which starts killing Vikings.
The film is ok to watch, but the story goes pretty much where you expect it to go (although there were a few nice touches, like the origin of the alien monster).

I really enjoyed this movie, even though I have one minor complaint. While Gosling was very good in the role, I wish he had spoken up because at times it was hard to hear him. Other than that, it was a very enjoyable film and I agree with the praises of Albert Brooks. He was indeed great for the role. They did waste Christina Hendreck's role though, as she wasn't in the movie very much.